


Your Shine is Something like a Mirror

by DollyPop



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon Het Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7174079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/pseuds/DollyPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because she and Soul had never been her Mama and her Papa. They weren’t doomed to fall apart at the seams. No, they were so much more like the Professor and Miss Marie than she’d ever noticed before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Shine is Something like a Mirror

For an instant, she realized that she was the first Albarn to come to Patchwork Labs in over a decade without any malice or spite or fury or fear in her bones directed toward the man who owned it. She was just a senior Meister looking to have her favorite professor read over her valedictorian speech. As the only one in her entire class to make a Death Scythe, not to mention her immaculate grades, she was graduating with honors.

And yet, with all those awards and all that prestige, she just couldn’t make the damn speech sound right. She sat across from Stein, balancing a teacup on her knee that Marie had handed her when she first walked in, and the full cup was definitely cold. Her opposite leg was shaking, bouncing up and down as Stein read over her neat handwriting as he had for the past two minutes.

Then, without warning, he looked over the notebook, quirking an eyebrow.

“Why did you want me to read this, again?” he asked, and Maka huffed, setting the teacup down on the table where a small plate of cookies had been promptly devoured via her stress eating.

Typical. Her favorite professor was unconventional if nothing else.

“To see if it’s…I don’t know! To see if it reads well.”

“It reads fine,” he said, setting the speech down on the desk and yawning, leaning back against the couch and crossing his ankle over his knee.

Maka rolled her eyes. “Just fine?”

“Mmm, this isn’t about the speech, is it?” he asked, looking at her with something like amusement on his face, and Maka’s brows went up.

“Really? News to me,” she snarked, but avoided his unsettling stare.

Truthfully, it _was_ about the speech. Sort of. Kind of? But not because it wasn’t right. Rather, because _everything_ wasn’t right, and that she had no idea how she was meant to talk about the bright future when hers was looking so murky and difficult to wade through.

She was a three star Meister. She was graduating top of her class. She had made a Death Scythe.

She had made the last Death Scythe.

She was-

“It’s because he might leave,” Stein said, and Maka’s head whipped up , her eyes wide as she met his analyzing, careful gaze, reading her soul.

_Soul._

She was scared he was going to go.

She was scared of what she should _do_.

“What? Professor-”

“You made him a Death Scythe, Maka. There are too few, now,” he rephrased, and the way he was looking at her made her feel transparent.

She looked down at her feet. “…but…but Papa didn’t leave.”

She spared a small glance up at Stein at that, but he seemed unaffected, having taken his glasses off and cleaning them with the edge of his turtleneck. “Spirit might leave, yet,” he mused, and Maka winced, all too aware of the fact that there was a massive need for Death Scythes all over the world. And with no chance of ever making another one, that left the remaining few who were available.

She should have known that Stein would be able to see right through her. One day, she wondered if she’d develop a Soul Perception as finely tuned as his. And it as in that moment that she was suddenly all too aware that, for all intents and purposes, she was sitting beside a celebrity.

And that she was a celebrity, now, too. In her own right. Not just from her parents’ legacy.

“Maka,” Stein cut in, suddenly, and she almost jolted as she swiftly focused back on him.

“Doctor Stein?”

“If or, most likely when he leaves, go with him.”

She was sure her face had pinked, if the warmth was anything to go by, but Stein seemed to pay that no attention at all. The very thought of going with Soul, traveling with him, was not in of itself strange. It was that after Meisters made Death Scythes, they only remained together if they were, well, _together_. Like Papa and Mama had. But Maka was not her Mama and Soul was not her Papa.

They couldn’t be.

Maka didn’t want to say that she’d been grappling with the decisions, the ifs, the maybes, the what thens, for weeks, now. With Death City nearly completely reconstructed and the ceremonies having taken place, the Death Scythes were leaving, once more. It had been deemed best that they disperse to their original stations until further notice. If not to keep an eye on Kishin eggs, who would most likely be popping up at alarming rates in the fallout, but at least as Death’s military representatives.

They’d lost so many, Stein was right. Tsar Pushka was dead, and Justin, the traitor. Marie was officially retired, having slapped down her Death Scythe resignation papers with a grin just a few weeks ago.

Azusa had offered to cover Oceania, as she’d been doing whenever Marie went off on vacations in the past, but that still left both Europe and Russia open.

And only two Death Scythes were left.

With Liz and Patti as Kid’s primary weapons, he had no need for a Death Scythe by his side. And, furthermore, a weapon who’d consumed a witch’s soul would likely prove counterproductive for the treaties Kid was working out.

Maka shuddered. Papa. He’d barely made it off the moon alive.

And Soul…

He was her weapon, her partner, her _person_. He’d been with her through it all. He’d been the only solidity in the tide of battles, the closest tie she had.

He was strong. He was strong when they partnered together. They’d made miracles together. She wanted to keep making miracles with him.

Maka looked down at her feet. Death City was home. She had never imagined leaving it for good. Only weapons went off as Death’s representatives. Sometimes, if they were particularly lucky, they got assigned a Meister at their new location. But Meisters tended to remain in Death City, acting as strategists where they were most needed. Retired Weapons taught at the DWMA, along with some of the more patient Meisters. Or they worked in Intelligence, or took new students on missions as their chaperones.

It would be out of the norm for her to go with him. What message would it send to the world? That she didn’t trust her weapon? That she didn’t want to be alone?

She almost bristled.

“Maka,” Stein said, bringing her back to the present, back to staring at her boots, back to the lab. And she blinked a few times before she steeled herself, looking back at the professor she’d admired and used as a role model. “Go with him. Forget the rules. Fuck what everyone else thinks.”

Maka’s brows went up. She knew Stein wasn’t one for following general propriety, but she’d thought even he’d stick to such a long standing tradition. After all, he’d adhered to it after he made Miss Marie, soon Mrs. Stein, a Death Scythe back when they were still students. Maka’d looked through old DWMA yearbooks for hours before she’d found the one with her mother’s graduating class.

And it hit her, suddenly and without the slightest cushion, that it was _because_ he’d stayed that he was telling her to go. Maka’s mouth dropped open as she stared at him, but he was looking beyond her, at the woman who had returned.

Stein hadn’t really been talking to her. He was simply talking _at_ her. He had been telling her to do what he didn’t. Telling her to do what he’d wanted but was too afraid to do, all those years ago. She looked over his face, his eyes looking serious and far away from behind his glasses, and understood that he was both intently looking at her and, yet, also looking _through_ her.

Maka had spoken with Marie about it, before. Phrases like ‘What are the odds?’ and ‘How lucky!’ tossed about. Marie’s wistful look as she recalled going to the airport, the sorrow that tinged her words when she spoke of how she just wanted a friendly face.

She didn’t want to leave it up to chance, like they did.  

They’d already battled the odds, her and Soul. They’d already faced them down, beat them with a lick and a promise and a pinch of luck. She wasn’t willing to go through it, again.

“…I should go with him?” Maka asked, her voice small, her eyes huge, her heart even larger. And Stein finally focused _on_ her, instead of focusing _through_ her as he had just a moment ago, having honed his perception on Marie in the kitchen who was humming, rummaging about for some concoction to try to ease her pregnancy cravings. And Maka could see that he was remembering his own past and his ghosts and his could have beens and maybes, at the fact that the life he was living now could have been the life he would have lived since he was 16. And he tipped his lips up at her.

“Speaking from experience? I presume you wouldn’t want to leave such things to chance.”


End file.
